A different 2nd from an alternate universe

G

Glenn E. Meyer

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The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.
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http://www.constitution.org/bor/amd_jmad.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/five-items-co...original-bill-rights-113008778--politics.html

Got this in a yahoo feed today. I wonder if that wording would have shut up the folks, like Justice Berger, who saw the 2nd as part of a militia. This version, it seems to me, implies that the militia is a nice side effect of the RKBA.

It would be hard to argue that the right wasn't individual. Of course, wily old Bird Scalia might still have blathered about reasonable restrictions.

It might also have ended the draft as we know it as there would have been massive conversions to pacifistic religions in the Civil War and Viet Nam for instance.
 
To the contrary, our opponents who have probably preferred the original wording of what became the Second Amendment. They would claim that only one clause dealing with the RKBA and two clauses dealing with the militia would be more proof that the Second Amendment applied to the militia rather than individuals.
 
It might have given us a different interpretation in Miller, though I've little doubt McReynolds would have found some equally tortured way to uphold the NFA.

In any case, calling for gun-control is a good political move for some, so they would likely find ways to question the scope of the first clause or place some limits on the right.

Of course, if we want true authenticity, the original 2nd Amendment stated,

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
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:cool:
 
To be fair Tom, should we require the answers to when that was actually passed? Yeah, that was a hint.

Edited to add: Folks seem to have some view that the 2A was placed in its order because of its importance. Nothing could be further from the truth. The 2A is the 2A because 2 amendments before it were not passed with the rest of the original bill of rights.
 
If we go back to the original debates, the first proposed amendment had to do with apportionment of Representatives by population. It had a weird mathematical formula that sought to ensure one Representative per 30,000 people, but no fewer than one per 50,000. It missed ratification by one state in the early 1790's.

The second was the one I quoted. It also died at the time, but would later become (more or less) the 27th Amendment. If ratified in that order, the structure of the Bill of Rights would have been quite different.

And yeah, I was being a smart-aleck :rolleyes:

[Edit: just for fun, look at the overusage of commas in the "original" 2nd Amendment and consider how much confusion and trouble similar punctuation caused in interpretation of the actual 2nd.]
 
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I would just eliminate all the passive/prefatory clauses:

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Period. No need for elucidation beyond replacing "the people" with "citizens" to make it clear this is an individual right, not a collective one.
 
csmsss said:
I would just eliminate all the passive/prefatory clauses:

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Period. No need for elucidation beyond replacing "the people" with "citizens" to make it clear this is an individual right, not a collective one.
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However, "citizens" has specific legal meaning. According to that language, my wife (who is here legally on a green card but who has not yet taken the test to become a citizen) would not be allowed the RKBA.
 
However, "citizens" has specific legal meaning. According to that language, my wife (who is here legally on a green card but who has not yet taken the test to become a citizen) would not be allowed the RKBA.
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But as a non-citizen alien, isn't it highly arguable that she is also not a member of "the people" ?
 
But as a non-citizen alien, isn't it highly arguable that she is also not a member of "the people" ?
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We could probably argue that the 14th Amendment would extend such protections, but why bother? The courts have found that "the people" refers to the individual in the 1st, (finally) 2nd, 4th, and 9th Amendments.
 
Glenn's first linked article blows away arguments about order and the importance of the amendments. Madison's original proposal was to modify the text of the Constitution and his amendments were presented in the order in which topics were addressed in the existing text of the Constitution.
 
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